


Baby Please Don't (let me) Hurt Me

by Unadulterated



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Agent Carter Spoilers, F/M, Handcuffs, Weird Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 14:02:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3293039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unadulterated/pseuds/Unadulterated
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Warning: Spoilers for Episode 5 of Agent Carter.</p><p>Non-spoilery summary: Clintasha and coping methods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baby Please Don't (let me) Hurt Me

**Author's Note:**

> Agent Carter is a lovely show and gives me _all the plot bunnies_. Even for characters that aren't in the show.

The first time Clint notices the handcuffs, Natasha is unlocking them.

She examines her wrist, her face flat with that unemotional air that Clint dearly hopes is fake. She unlocks the other handcuff, then, takes it off the bars of the bed and sets the handcuffs in her bedside drawer.

When she sees Clint watching her, she stops moving. Not freezing, not a frightened deer in the headlights, just—stilling, watching, waiting.

Clint doesn’t know where she got the handcuffs. Who handcuffed her to the bed. _Why_ she’s handcuffed to the bed. He can’t come up with any answers that don’t make his stomach turn, but Natasha has already punched him in the kidney twice in the month that she’s been here so he doesn’t panic or demand answers.

Just asks, “You okay?” casually as you please.

Natasha stares at him for a split second longer, her head slightly tilted in a way that makes Clint want to take at least two steps back—he holds his ground, he’s never smart enough to run when he should—and then she says, “Yes.”

She stands up, and the eerie surreality of the moment dissipates like morning mist.

He doesn’t forget the incident, but after a few days he dismisses it.

 

—§§§—

 

Clint doesn’t walk into her room without knocking. He just doesn’t. It seems like a sure shortcut to a knife in his gut.

So he assumes she sleeps—she did when they were still on the run back toward SHIELD, she’s not a vampire—but he doesn’t watch her. That would be _creepy_.

And he’s not being creepy, okay, he just wants to make sure she’s okay because she’s been here almost five months, now, and the last mission was a potential disaster and Natasha didn’t escape completely unscathed.

She’s asleep when he pokes his head in, silent as an owl. (He likes birds, so sue him.) One wrist is handcuffed to the headboard.

He does a perimeter check of her rooms, but there’s no one there, just her, and he doesn’t know who would handcuff her to a bed. So he fades back, silent, makes it all the way to the door and is closing it (quiet) before he notices her eyes, open just to slits, watching him lazily has he leaves.

There’s a strange chill up his spine as he closes the door.

 

—§§§—

 

Natasha has a broken leg, isn’t supposed to be up, and after having to have it reset twice by the doctors, she’s finally listening. Under threat of being taken off active duty, which, if he’s being honest, Clint is pretty sure is the _only_ reason she’s not still walking around like she’s perfectly fine.

He understands the intense hatred of medical, but resolves to keep a closer eye on her in the future, anyway. If she gets hurt, he can at least try to stitch her up himself.

For now, he’ll settle for helping her get to bed.

After knowing each other for a year and a half, Natasha seems to have realized that Clint is really good with boundaries, with gauging distances and personal space. A lot of her modesty has evaporated now that she knows she doesn’t need to use it as a shield. So he fetches her pajamas, and she changes right there, unconcerned. Clint makes it a point, if only to himself, not to stare at her, but she’s strong, and there’s the simple, pale-cold beauty of Russia etched into the angles and curves of her body.

Clint knows what it feels like to want to run, so he stands, quiet, and doesn’t give her a reason to.

“Anything else?” he says.

“Top drawer, get the handcuffs,” Natasha says breezily.

Clint pauses, just a hitch in his rhythm, and goes to get them. But Natasha notices and has her eyebrows raised when he turns with his hand outstretched.

“You’ve seen them before, haven’t you?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, cautious. “But, uh, I don’t know why. What they’re for. And I’m not asking,” he adds hastily, because he _hates_ it when Natasha goes quiet, closes off. “I just. They’re. I don’t know.”

“Words are not your strong suit,” Natasha murmurs, a faint smile at the corner of her mouth. She turns the handcuffs over in her hands. “If you’re curious, you can ask.”

Clint has learned that Natasha lies and manipulates. Of course she does; how can someone like her live another way?

But he’s also learned that he’ll never know the difference between her truth and her lies, so he tends to take her at her word. He sits on the bed next to her. “Okay. Then what’s with the handcuffs?”

The quiet isn’t awkward, or forced, just and odd absence of conversation, and when Clint looks over at her, Natasha is staring at the wall with a far-off expression that slowly smooths out into a blank mask, head tilted slightly. A chill runs up Clint’s spine.

“When I was a little girl, they’d handcuff us to the beds. They trained us—brainwashed us. You know that.” She runs the tips of her fingers along the outer rim of one of the cuffs. “Sometimes, still, when I fight hard, when I kill someone, do the things I’m good at, I can feel that part of my brain lurking. And I handcuff myself to the bed so that, when I wake up, I know I’m not on a mission.” She lowers her head. “It’s sick. I know.”

Clint reaches out, carefully telegraphing, and touches the handcuffs. They’re just regular metal, somewhat cold, a little warmer where Natasha has already touched them. “It’s not sick,” he says. He sees her smirk, disbelieving, and adds, “Well, it’s sick what _they_ did. But you’re not.” Natasha doesn’t believe things without proof, though, and Clint isn’t sure, exactly, how to bridge that gap between their personalities. “You know how Coulson whacks me on the back of the head when I screw up? That’s ‘cause if he doesn’t, I wait for it. Used to get hit all the time. Now, if no one does, I get—you know how I get. So he just—whacks me. Doesn’t hurt, but my brain,” Clint makes a vague gesture around his temples, “you know. Like you, I guess.”

Natasha’s watching him now, with that odd expression she got the first time, when he said he wasn’t going to put her down like a rabid dog. A consternated, desperate kind of confusion, but so quiet, so small. So hopeful.

“It’s what other people do to us,” Clint finishes lamely. “I don’t think you’re sick at all.”

Natasha nods slowly. In the silence, Clint can only hope this conversation kinds into her, but he can’t guarantee that and he has no more words to give her. So he waits, waits, waits, and finally when the clock reads 10:13 he decides he’s been there long enough and stands up.

“Good night,” he says.

Natasha doesn’t say anything in reply, but he knows that’s not always a bad thing, and he turns out the lights as he leaves.

 

—§§§—

 

The next morning at breakfast, Natasha drops a little key on his bacon.

Clint stares at it, blinks blearily, still waking up and says, “What?”

“It’s a copy,” she says. Still standing. Uncomfortable then; quick escape? Transient conversation? Faux casualness? “For the cuffs.”

“Oh,” Clint says, surprised. He picks up the key. He doesn’t know when he would ever use it, _why_ he would ever use it, in what situation Natasha wouldn’t be able to do it for herself. But the meaning of the gesture is strong and Clint finds himself pulling out his dog tags from under his shirt and beginning to string the key on it. “Thanks,” he says, looking up, but Natasha is already gone.

Just looks over her shoulder with the ghost of a girl’s smile, just for him.


End file.
